


She who fights Monsters

by lunicole



Series: The Adder's Bite [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Genderbending, Kink Meme, fem!Hannibal, fem!will, male!Alana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-20 16:10:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/889250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunicole/pseuds/lunicole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Is this just a courtesy visit or does Jack wants you to evaluate me after last month’s incident ?” Will asks.</p><p>Doctor Lecter has this odd kind of feline elegance to the way she moves. She walks next to Will with long, drawn-out steps, stands next to her desk with her hands carefully folded in front of her skirt.  Her heels are too high and her makeup is too carefully applied. She doesn’t bother with those things whenever they have those talks in her home, but she’s out of her own territory now, and it’s with those fake artifices of feminity that she manages to impose herself as an authority figure the way Will never could. </p><p>“Neither. Alan sent me here.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	She who fights Monsters

Will still cannot sleep. There’s her bed, drenched in sweat in the warm summer night, and visions passing through her pupils every time she closes her eyes. There’s the restlessness of the last killer Jack asked her to profile remaining in her veins now, and his very personal design takes odd, fantastic shapes under the power of her imagination. She looks at the ceilling, and they are still there, the bodies under the warm sun of California, the pale palette of dead skin mixing itself gracefully with the darker tones of rotten meat. It seems to come alive in the shaddows of the night, dark putrid flesh dripping over her, and she won’t scream, not now, because her body won’t move, no matter how hard she tries to.

She blinks once, twice, and suddenly it’s over. She’s in her classroom, in Quantico, and the students are leaving that dark little cupboard in which she teaches. Will blacked out again. Closing her eyes, she reajusts her glasses on the bridge of her nose, sighs, leaning on her desk. It’s only when she raises up her face again that she sees her.

“Is this just a courtesy visit or does Jack wants you to evaluate me after last month’s incident ?” Will asks.

Doctor Lecter has this odd kind of feline elegance to the way she moves. She walks next to Will with long, drawn-out steps, stands next to her desk with her hands carefully folded in front of her skirt. Her heels are too high and her makeup is too carefully applied. She doesn’t bother with those things whenever they have those talks in her home, but she’s out of her own territory now, and it’s with those fake artifices of feminity that she manages to impose herself as an authority figure the way Will never could.

“Neither. Alan sent me here.” 

Obviously. Will shrugs, turns around to gather her files before heading back home, to her fishing lures and to her dogs. Jack Crawford insisted on her taking a break for at least a week, to get herself back in shape. He doesn’t understand that being alone with her thoughts is exactly the opposite of what she needs. She doesn’t want to know about what Alan thinks of whatever she did wrong on the last mission, and she doesn’t want Hannibal Lecter to be the one telling her that.

She shrugs Hannibal’s hand away from her shoulder, but it doesn’t seem to have much effect on the psychiatrist. Hannibal simply

“Tell him I’m fine by myself.”  
“I can’t lie to an old friend, Will.”

The look Will give Hannibal is a tired one. She doesn’t have time for Hannibal’s carefully worded questions and therapy sessions. She just wants to pop a few more pills on the way home and watch mind-numbing, tasteless television in a vain effort to keep the monsters in her mind at bay.

“And you haven’t been eating properly,” Hannibal states matter-of-factly. “Let me at least help with that, then I’ll be able to say that I took good care of you to Mr Bloom.”

Will doesn’t know exactly how or why she agrees to it, really, but she’s quickly inside Hannibal’s car, expensive leather against the cheap synthetic fabric of her ten dollars dress shirt. There’s baroque music playing on the car’s radio, lute and harpsichord, and Will wonders for a moment if Hannibal’s playing it as a part of the whole not-exactly-therapy thing they’ve got going on or because that actually what she listens to while driving. It’s most probably a mix of both. They talk about inconsequential things like Will’s dogs and the kind of things Lecter’s patients talk about when they’re going through therapy. It feels like psychotherapy, it really does, but Will knows that this is better than whatever talk she’d have to have with Jack Crawford or Alan if any of them realised how utterly degraded this job has made her mental health. Hannibal knows because Hannibal is smarter than them, and it seems like she won’t do anything to make Will stop doing her job if Will accepts to follow her terms.

It’s not the last time Doctor Lecter drops by Will’s classes to enquire about her state of being, although she does become a tad bit subtler in the way she does it. It’s an odd sort of therapy this time, and Will still hates therapy as a concept very much, but at least Hannibal prepares her decent food and sinfully good coffee whenever they meet. She knows the tricks and she knows Hannibal’s intricate grammar and use of words whenever she asks more personal questions. Will chases the questions away with a few vague words, takes another bite from the boeuf bourguignon or whatever fancy French meal Hannibal prepared her that day. She still blacks out, not too often, and she still sleepwalks, but it does get a bit better, now that she spends her days teaching, fishing and taking care of her dogs. She knows what it means but it doesn’t make her change her mind about Jack Crawford, Alan, her future or Hannibal Lecter. 

It’s been a three months, now, and the warm summer days have left place to fall. She’s still not back in the field, because Jack Crawford won’t let her even though the knife wound on her back has started to heal. Maybe Will hates him a bit for it, for the way he treats her like if she was a fragile little clockwork creation to be sent to the repairman once in awhile. Maybe Will hates Alan too for it, because Alan wants nothing but the best for Will, even though “the best” might not be what she really aspires to.

Somehow, Will hopes that her feelings towards the both of them don’t perspire into her conversations with Lecter. They do, and she knows that Hannibal is nothing if not perceptive.

“What are you going to do about your nightmares, Will ?”  
“I don’t think there’s anything to do about it.”

It’s one of those times again, when Lecter and her sit opposite each other in that large, darkened room she uses for patients. Will is wearing one of those too large, ridiculously comfortable plaid flannel shirts, and she feels alien in that little bubble of elegant furniture and expensive pencil skirts Hannibal Lecter seems to only ever fully exist in. The pattern on the rug is too intricate, and the deep colour of the wooden furniture is too rich. It makes Will’s skin crawl, somehow, because it reminds her of another life, a long time ago, back when she could only dream of things like the paté de foie gras Hannibal makes or the rococo paintings on the psychiatrist’s walls.

“Maybe there is something to be done. You never did tell me what those were about. Any recurring images, themes ?”

Will would say something about the subconscious as defined by Freud being a load of bullshit, but she knows that it would be pointless to do so. They’ve already cleared up that aspect of Will’s psyche, and she doesn’t want to tell the tale of those few, awkward encounters with drunken teenage girls, college guys and the emergency nurses back when she worked for the police that make up her sexual history. Hannibal isn’t here to talk about her repressed sexual pulsions, but she won’t go directly about whatever happened in California. It’s an elegant way to put the subject on the table, and Will isn’t in the mood to try and stave off Hannibal’s polite yet unwanted enquiries. She sighs.

“And I thought you were my ally in this, not my shrink,” she says in a low tone, punctuated with a laugh that leaves an acrid taste in her mouth.

Hannibal doesn’t answer right away, as Will had expected her too. She gives Will a curious look, her manicured hands never leaving their place over the little black Moleskine on her knees. She pauses to think for a moment, up until her eyes light up with something that reminds Will of a predator finding a prey. There’s a faint smile on her lips as she speaks.

“You think that, if you tell me, I’ll tell Jack Crawford about it and that it’ll keep you from returning to work.”

Hannibal is intelligent, too much so, and Will has to bite her lips to keep herself from answering anything to this. There’s a soft rustling noise as she uncrosses and crosses her long legs again, her eyes glistening for a quick instant with something oddly predatory. Maybe Will is imagining monsters again, the kind that lurks in the darkness and feed on the fantastic creative power of her own mind.

“I won’t, if that changes anything,” Hannibal says, and that spark isn’t in her eyes anymore, gone as if it had never existed. “Is it about Thomas Webster ?”

There’s an odd kind of softness to her words, something that isn’t usual for her, and Will picks it up right away. Will would like to trust Hannibal on this, on letting her choose for herself what’s best for her, but it’s not exactly the way things work with psychiatrists, not even with Alan and his quiet, almost paternal concern. She doesn’t want to open that gate, not yet, and still she finds herself remembering, flashes passing in front of her eyes. Before she even knows it, her hand is over her right shoulder, tracing the shape of a wound that’s starting to form a scar.

“Yes.”

Hannibal smiles, and she doesn’t need to ask Will to say more; the elegant arch of her eyebrows is enough of a command. Will’s eyes are on her lips, the sharp contrast they create next to her white teeth. Her voice isn’t shaking, not really, but there’s this hesitation to her intonation, vowels either too long or too short.

“You know, Alan said that it was normal for me to be feeling fear and anger after something like this. He’s always so full of good intentions for me, but he doesn’t understand.”

Will shakes her head, lowers her gaze to her own shoes. They look out of place, dark blue canvas sneakers next to the cold hard lines of the wooden floor and the expensive leather of the psychiatrist’s armchair.

“The thing is that a serial rapist and murderer tried to kill me, and he would have succeeded if I hadn’t killed him first. And the only reason I was able to do that is because I had managed to slip into his head first. You see, it’s not me emptying a complete magazine into him, or even the stab I received in the process that’s giving me nightmares.”

She can’t help a dry, self-deprecating laugh to escape her lips, making her shoulders tremble a little. Hannibal is still silent, and Will doesn’t want to look at her face. She doesn’t want to see that same clinical, detached interest she’s seen on every psychiatrist she’s ever met, because Hannibal had been good at looking at her like a human being and not a test subject so far. She takes a deep breath, expires slowly. 

“It’s what I saw inside his head just before he died.”

Will waits for a question, for Lecter to go and dissect her like the others, but it doesn’t happen. There’s a rustling of fabric, a few steps on the wooden floor and a hand over Will’s messy hair. It strange there but Will can’t find it in herself to push it away. She looks up, and Hannibal is standing in front of her, observing her with something that might be compassion. Somehow, Will can’t help but to feel that she understands. Her face has that quiet reassurance faintly drawn over her otherwise sharp, angular features. Will tries to smile, for Hannibal and for herself, because it feels like the right thing to do. It doesn’t work.

“I’m sorry Will.”

They stay like this for a moment, in silence, and Hannibal’s elongated fingers are playing mindlessly with Will’s hair, tracing circles over her scalp in soothing motions. It works, and Will closes her eyes, breathes slowly, and the shadows lurking in the corners of her mind do not matter in the present moment. It’s a nice feeling but it doesn’t last, and Hannibal’s hand leaves Will’s head as she proposes to make the both of them tea. Will nods at the suggestion even though it’s not really what she wants right now.

They don’t talk about California again, not that night nor during the following week whenever Hannibal pops into Will’s classroom with promises of fancy home cooked meals and wine.

Jack Crawford calls her back after four months of silence. He wants her for a case. Will stays silent for a moment on the line, and there’s Winston looking at her with large, shiny eyes because she has yet to brush him before going to bed. She pets the dog, fingers scratching the soft fur behind his ears, and says yes.

She doesn’t have a relapse, even with the curious, worried eyes of Alan Bloom on her when they see each other in Jack Crawford’s office. Will knows that he doesn’t want her out there, not now and not ever, and he is full of good intentions, he really is, but he doesn’t understand. She tries to smile when he invites her for a coffee afterwards, to catch up and talk about Abigael, who’s currently recovering in a private clinic in Baltimore. She still wants him, with the way the corners of his eyes wrinkle when he smiles, and how his voice takes this slightly higher tone when he’s upset but doesn’t want to show it. The coffee tastes like mud and Alan doesn’t tell her that she shouldn’t be here even though she knows that the words are burning the back of his throat. She doesn’t try to kiss him like before, and they part with an awkward little peck on the cheek.

She goes to Hannibal afterwards. The fallen leaves are covering the road and she drives carefully on her way there, because concentrating on the road ahead is good to keep her mind off things she’d rather not think about. Will doesn’t tell her about meeting Alan, saying vague, boring things about those feelings she had when looking around Jack’s office and trying to understand a bit better the mechanism of his mind. She knows that there’s this restlessness to her movements and tone, and she knows that Hannibal can see it.

That night, when Will is about to leave, Hannibal stops her in that wordless way she has of giving orders. Her manicured hand is on her shoulder, and Will feels it against the line of her collarbone. It feels like a cue, and Will leaps forward with her eyes closed, lifting herself on the tips of her feet, toes curling inside her sneakers. Hannibal kisses without questions, her thumb against Will’s pulse and Will would pull away, she really would, but Hannibal’s lips are soft and have that very discreet aroma that mixes coffee and lipstick. They taste foreign to Will, and she can’t help but to want more. This isn’t Alan Bloom’s soft manners and faint stubble against her cheek, and the crushing frustration she feels whenever she moves her hand to the back of his neck only to have it pushed away by well-meaning yet desperately cold fingers. It’s not what she believes she need, but it’s definitely what she wants.

Her hand finds its way on Hannibal’s waist, and she can feel supple skin under the fabric of her dress shirt. Will toys mindlessly with the hem of the elegant pencil skirt, a suggestion with a flicker of her fingers.

“Will,” Hannibal says as she pulls away ever so slightly, and there’s an apology in her voice as she does so.

Will understands, in a way, even though it makes her mad. She sighs, takes a step back and makes that awkward little wave before whispering something that sounds like “Sorry” more to herself than to Hannibal. She leaves, drives home with that old CD of The Rolling Stones that’s been collecting dust in her truck for decades blasting through her speakers. Maybe she looks insane, screaming the lyrics inside her car to keep herself from breaking something. Maybe she’s insane and angry and maybe she doesn’t really control her body anymore, stopping on the road only to hit her head against the wheel out of frustration. It’s Alan Bloom and Abigael sleeping peacefully hooked up to the soft humming of the hospital’s machines all over again.

That night, she sleeps a dreamless sleep.

Will fights monsters, gazes into the abyss and the abyss gazes back, as it always does. She acts as if nothing had ever happened between her and Hannibal, as if she hadn’t tried to fuck her psychiatrist out of frustration over the mess with Alan. Hannibal does the same, elegant painted lips speaking elegant words and carefully constructed sentences, her elongated fingers folded on her lap. It doesn’t change the fact that Will has realised that she wants her, badly, in another, rawer way that she wants Alan, and it doesn’t change that Hannibal can’t want Will back. If there’s that strange spark in her eyes, if there’s that slight twitch to the corner of her mouth, it’s solely a product of Will’s dangerous imagination.

They’ve both downplayed the insanity that is taking over Will’s body for a while. It is now impossible not to acknowledge how she blacks out more and more often without knowing it, how the dark fantasies she tells Hannibal about whenever she’s had too much wine at the dinner table are taking over her mind again. Will fights monsters because she wants to. Hannibal respects her choice, unlike Alan and his gentle paternalistic way of pushing her back to her classroom with words that never cross his lips.

It’s winter, now.

She has lost weight, and the muscles from her FBI training have vanished, leaving her body bony and sickly. Sanity is slipping through her fingers and there’s nothing she can do to stop it from all turning into dust. Alan still doesn’t talk about the changes that operated in her since she came back to work for Jack Crawford. Sometimes she half-dreams of another Doctor Lecter, one that slips her hand into her hair, whispers sweet maledictions to her ears and reeks of blood. Sometimes those dreams feel so desperately real, so much that Will can feel the tickle of heavy breathing on her neck, and sometimes they’re covered with that thick, hazy fog of distant memories that characterize half-remembered childhood events. They’re good, and she knows for a thing that Hannibal is in no way the elegant beast that eats her body and soul alive in those fantasies. She doesn’t care anymore.

Will Graham fights monsters, and sometimes, sometimes, in those wicked hallucinations of hers, she loses.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the kink meme and the challenge to write them as women. It was fun and I might write something like a sequel, if I get the time and inspiration.


End file.
